Moretto focuses on energy savings, Industry 4.0

For Italian ancillary equipment maker Moretto SpA, the main highlight at Fakuma is the Eureka Plus system, consisting of X Max multi-bed driers, a Flowmatik supervisory system, OTX thermal exchange hoppers and an online Moisture Meter.

In an interview at the Drinktec fair in Munich, Paolo Gasparotto, business development manager, also discussed a large project for a U.S. customer for dehumidifying equipment for PET processing.

Gasparotto confirmed that this is an additional project to the one that had been revealed at Fakuma 2014, which related to use of an Eureka system for recycling of PET fibers at a carpet producer with 102 U.S. production sites, consuming at the time 7.9 million tons per year of PET. This had been at the time "the worldwide largest installed system for drying plastics."

Gasparotto said specifically that "the real news here at Fakuma" is the Moisture Meter Plus solution of a ring or crown at the top of the OTX dryer measuring initial moisture content with sampling every 2 seconds. The final content is measured and analyzed at the bottom of the OTX after dehumidification.

Closed loop Moisture Meter Plus use guarantees "tangible and certifiable quality, item by item, batch by batch," according to Massanzago, Italy-based Moretto.

Gasparotto explained, "This delta [difference] in terms of moisture content is now controlled directly by the dryer. So we not only have higher efficiency with the Eureka Plus system using the OTX drying hopper and Flowmatik as the synchronizer between the two, but we now also close the loop to obtain higher efficiency with the best level of energy saving. We control material quality and give you the best moisture content with the best energy saving."

Use of a particular internal geometry in OTX driers that benefits material flow and air distribution has also been applied in a new X-Comb compact small-batch medical dryer, launched in February, with an integrated dew point equalizer managing desiccant cartridge rotation speed.

Gasparotto said Moretto has been innovative in Industry 4.0 almost 10 years ago when it came to understand the importance of synergy between all the departments in a factory.

"We already developed our Mowis supervisory system at that time as our special supervisor that allows each piece of our equipment to speak with the others and create a perfect balance between the departments and the process. We consolidate all these points very well at Fakuma 2017," he said.

Despite this early work, Moretto has only started to emphasize it this year, specifically for Fakuma, by actively using the 4.0 term. It talks about "Moretto 4.0" in general as "4.0 Identity Digital Humanism," with its smart factory interconnected machinery concept benefiting from use of ERP enterprise resource planning software and real-time remote control.

One thing to which Fakuma visitors have become accustomed will be missing at the 2017 fair: the red Moretto truck parked between the halls, showing the company's equipment. Gasparotto confirmed, however, that the "Moretto in Motion" road show with the truck visiting large companies in Europe continues today. It has been recently on tour in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Poland, Turkey and Spain, and it was in Scandinavia during Drinktec 2017.

"So we make very intensive use of the truck", Gasparotto said.